The need for an improved telecommunications network with a much higher capacity and much simpler control is widely recognized. The art of telecommunication networking in general require fundamental changes.
It is well known that structural simplicity reduces network cost and improves network performance. In order to facilitate the introduction of high-quality broadband services, the network structure need be simplified and the network diameter need be reduced. It is desirable that a path from one edge node to another traverse a small number of intermediate nodes. Realization of such a network is greatly facilitated by employing switching nodes of large dimensions and simple structures.
There is a need to explore simpler and more powerful data switches, and new network structures for efficiently deploying such data switches.